Destiny Exotics are “Very Tricky”, Bungie Continues to “Find the Right Balance”

Bungie staffer talks about making

If you’ve even heard about Bungie’s Destiny in passing, you’ll have heard about its Exotics, arguably the most prized gear in the game next to raid weapons. Exotic guns like Ice Breaker, Gjallarhorn and even Hard Light are sought by the community and Bungie continues to make every effort to find the right balance for them all.

Talking to fans in a forum Q&A, staff member Newsk stated that, “We’ll continue to try and find the right balance for all the exotic guns. We know they’re special. We consider them important items in the Destiny world and they will always be looked at for future patches.”

The tricky part about doing this though is that Exotics have to be both unique and useful. “Unique implies different and special. Useful implies accessible and understandable to many players. Some exotics do this well and some leave players wanting a little bit more.”

The best example Newsk could come up with was regarding the Exotic hand cannon Thorn. “I will never forget an interaction I had with a co-worker during the first exotic patch. He was lamenting Thorn, he didn’t like the slow reload or the shallow six round magazine. This was addressed in the patch. We gave it nine rounds and a faster reload.

“The day after the patch went live, he sadly told me he thought Thorn had lost its character. Even though it got better and we had addressed his pain point, his fantasy of what made Thorn unique was reduced.”

That being said, Thorn is now considered one of the best PvP weapons in the game and a more than viable option for PvE. So there is that. Stay tuned for more information on Bungie’s plans – the developer recently dropped a large update for Destiny which fine-tuned a number of weapons, added Weekly Heroic matchmaking and even allowed players to transfer vault items via the mobile app.